Cutting Across Media

By Kembrew McLeod & Rudolf Kuenzli

Release Date : 2011-07-15

Genre : Histoire de l’art

FIle Size : 11.21 MB

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Cutting Across Media In this collection of essays, leading academics, critics, and artists historicize collage and appropriation tactics that cut across diverse media and genres. They take up issues of appropriation in the popular and the avant-garde, in altered billboards and the work of the renowned painter Chris Ofili, in hip-hop and the compositions of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and in audio mash-ups, remixed news broadcasts, pranks, culture jamming, and numerous other cultural forms. The borrowing practices that they consider often run afoul of intellectual property regimes, and many of the contributors address the effects of copyright and trademark law on creativity. Among the contributors are the novelist and essayist Jonathan Lethem, the poet and cultural critic Joshua Clover, the filmmaker Craig Baldwin, the hip-hop historian Jeff Chang, the ’zine-maker and sound collage artist Lloyd Dunn, and Negativland, the infamous collective that was sued in 1991 for sampling U2 in a satirical sound collage. Cutting Across Media is both a serious examination of collage and appropriation practices and a celebration of their transformative political and cultural possibilities. Contributors. Craig Baldwin, David Banash, Marcus Boon, Jeff Chang, Joshua Clover, Lorraine Morales Cox, Lloyd Dunn, Philo T. Farnsworth, Pierre Joris, Douglas Kahn, Rudolf Kuenzli, Rob Latham, Jonathan Lethem, Carrie McLaren, Kembrew McLeod, Negativland, Davis Schneiderman, David Tetzlaff, Gábor Vályi, Warner Special Products, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

More by Kembrew McLeod & Rudolf Kuenzli

Kembrew McLeod & Peter Dicola How did the Depression-era folk-song collector Alan Lomax end up with a songwriting credit on Jay-Z’s song “Takeover”? Why doesn’t Clyde Stubblefield, the primary drummer on James Brown recordings from the late 1960s such as “Funky Drummer” and “Cold Sweat,” get paid for other musicians’ frequent use of the beats he performed on those songs? The music industry’s approach to digital sampling—the act of incorporating snippets of existing recordings into new ones—holds the answers. Exploring the complexities and contradictions in how samples are licensed, Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola interviewed more than 100 musicians, managers, lawyers, industry professionals, journalists, and scholars. Based on those interviews, Creative License puts digital sampling into historical, cultural, and legal context. It describes hip-hop during its sample-heavy golden age in the 1980s and early 1990s, the lawsuits that shaped U.S. copyright law on sampling, and the labyrinthine licensing process that musicians must now navigate. The authors argue that the current system for licensing samples is inefficient and limits creativity. For instance, by estimating the present-day licensing fees for the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (1989) and Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet (1990), two albums from hip-hop’s golden age, the authors show that neither album could be released commercially today. Observing that the same dynamics that create problems for remixers now reverberate throughout all culture industries, the authors conclude by examining ideas for reform.

Kembrew McLeod Released in the US in 1978, Blondie's Parallel Lines brought the band their first commercial success. By mixing punk, disco and radio-friendly rock with nostalgic influences from 1960s girl groups, pop and surf rock, the album was a departure from Blondie's earlier two albums. Parallel Lines embraced the diversity of New York City's varied music scenes, and embodied the social conflicts that played out between fans of disco, pop, punk and mainstream rock.

Kembrew McLeod's critical account of Parallel Lines and the story of Blondie's rise also serves as an alternative history of 1970s American popular music. It challenges the conventional wisdom that dismissed disco as fluffy (and implicitly feminine) prefab schlock, while at the same time elevating punk's pop influences.

Kembrew McLeod & Rudolf Kuenzli In this collection of essays, leading academics, critics, and artists historicize collage and appropriation tactics that cut across diverse media and genres. They take up issues of appropriation in the popular and the avant-garde, in altered billboards and the work of the renowned painter Chris Ofili, in hip-hop and the compositions of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and in audio mash-ups, remixed news broadcasts, pranks, culture jamming, and numerous other cultural forms. The borrowing practices that they consider often run afoul of intellectual property regimes, and many of the contributors address the effects of copyright and trademark law on creativity. Among the contributors are the novelist and essayist Jonathan Lethem, the poet and cultural critic Joshua Clover, the filmmaker Craig Baldwin, the hip-hop historian Jeff Chang, the ’zine-maker and sound collage artist Lloyd Dunn, and Negativland, the infamous collective that was sued in 1991 for sampling U2 in a satirical sound collage. Cutting Across Media is both a serious examination of collage and appropriation practices and a celebration of their transformative political and cultural possibilities. Contributors. Craig Baldwin, David Banash, Marcus Boon, Jeff Chang, Joshua Clover, Lorraine Morales Cox, Lloyd Dunn, Philo T. Farnsworth, Pierre Joris, Douglas Kahn, Rudolf Kuenzli, Rob Latham, Jonathan Lethem, Carrie McLaren, Kembrew McLeod, Negativland, Davis Schneiderman, David Tetzlaff, Gábor Vályi, Warner Special Products, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

Kembrew McLeod From Benjamin
Franklin's newspaper hoax that faked the death of his rival to Abbie Hoffman’s
attempt to levitate the Pentagon, pranksters, hoaxers, and con artists have caused
confusion, disorder, and laughter in Western society for centuries. Profiling
the most notorious mischief makers from the 1600s to the present day, Pranksters
explores how “pranks” are part of a long tradition of speaking truth to power
and social critique.

Invoking such historical and contemporary figures as P.T. Barnum,
Jonathan Swift, WITCH, The Yes Men, and Stephen Colbert, Kembrew McLeod shows
how staged spectacles that balance the serious and humorous can spark important
public conversations. In some instances, tricksters have incited social change
(and unfortunate prank blowback) by manipulating various forms of media, from
newspapers to YouTube. For example, in the 1960s, self-proclaimed “professional
hoaxer” Alan Abel lampooned America’s hypocritical sexual mores by using
conservative rhetoric to fool the news media into covering a satirical organization
that advocated clothing naked animals. In the 1990s, Sub Pop Records
then-receptionist Megan Jasper satirized the commodification of alternative
music culture by pranking the New York
Times into reporting on her fake lexicon of “grunge speak.” Throughout this
book, McLeod shows how pranks interrupt the daily flow of approved information
and news, using humor to underscore larger, pointed truths.

Written in an accessible, story-driven style, Pranksters
reveals how mischief makers have left their shocking, entertaining, and
educational mark on modern political and social life.

Jonathan Sterne, Thomas A. Discenna, Toby Miller, Michael Griffin, Victor Pickard, Carol Stabile, Fernando P. Delgado, Amy M. Pason, Kathleen F. McConnell, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Alexandra Juhasz, Ira Wagman, Michael Z. Newman, Mark Howard, Ted Striphas, Jayson Harsin, Kembrew McLeod, Joel Saxe & Michelle Rodino-Colocino 21 authors who raise difficult questions about academic labor in the field of communication studies. From defunding of universities to the real dilemmas facing administrators: from the changing politics of careers to the ways that gender and class play out for faculty and students; from the types of work that get published and promoted to the tyranny of PowerPoint; from the politics of fundraising, to the devolution of administration, to the role of unions in universities. The authors provide plenty of proposals and programs for change, from small but meaningful gestures to activist programs for pedagogy and research, to massive proposals for organizing ourselves and transforming the ways our departments and fields do business. In the process, they raise even more provocative questions. Authors consider a host of issues big and small, from defunding of universities to the real dilemmas facing administrators: from the changing politics of careers to the ways that gender and class play out for faculty and students; from the types of work that get published and promoted to the tyranny of PowerPoint; from the politics of fundraising, to the devolution of administration, to the role of unions in universities. The authors provide plenty of proposals and programs for change, from small but meaningful gestures to activist programs for pedagogy and research, to massive proposals for organizing ourselves and transforming the ways our departments and fields do business. In the process, they raise even more questions. Contributors include Sarah Banet-Weiser, Fernando Delgado, Thomas Discenna, Michael Griffin, Jayson Harsin, Mark Hayward, Alex Juhasz, Kembrew McLeod, Kathleen F. McConnell, Toby Miller, Michael Z. Newman, Amy Pason, Victor Pickard, Michelle Rodino-Colocino, Joel Saxe, Carol Stabile, Ted Striphas, Ira Wagman and two chairs who elected to remain anonymous so they could tell their stories candidly.